New mission

After more than five years, I’m transitioning to become a volunteer Mozillian.

Working at Mozilla Foundation was a dream come true. As an open internet advocate, I could not imagine a better place to advance those values.

When I joined, the Foundation was mostly a non-profit legal entity housing the Firefox product. Mark Surman invited me to join as one of the early employees of a new, mission-focused MoFo, as portfolio manager for Mozilla’s media innovation projects. I quickly found my way into development, as a founding member of Mozilla’s first fundraising program. We took revenues from $250K in 2009 to over ~$14M a year – over $50m in new revenue.

I was fortunate to learn and take part on the frontlines of public interest technology, the mobile revolution, and social enterprise. It was an honor and a rare opportunity to be part of building an institution.

This month, I am making the transition to a new role leading development for the R&D initiative at the International Rescue Committee. You can reach me at @benrito on Twitter.